Towards a formal framework for software reuse

It is reasonable to expect that the use of formal methods in software reuse will help improve the practice of this discipline as well as enhance our understanding of its products and processes. We have identified the following technical activities that take place in software reuse as candidates for...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Information sciences 1998-10, Vol.110 (3), p.135-149
Main Authors: Mili, Rym, Raymond, Jacques
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Component retrieval
Formal specifications
Functional distance
Program modification
Software reuse
Structural distance
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:It is reasonable to expect that the use of formal methods in software reuse will help improve the practice of this discipline as well as enhance our understanding of its products and processes. We have identified the following technical activities that take place in software reuse as candidates for a formal modeling: representing reusable assets, representing reuse queries, defining matching criteria, defining a storage structure, deriving measures of distance and deriving a calculus of program modification. In this paper we discuss how a simple mathematical model based on set theory and relation theory allows us to capture these activities in a unified, coherent framework.
ISSN:0020-0255
1872-6291
DOI:10.1016/S0020-0255(98)10025-7